When You Go to Electric Sunday, Go Early

On Sunday, I went to Electric Sunday, Fairfax County's monthly free electronics recycling day.

I was getting rid of a dead DVD player, an old CRT monitor, a few old cell phones and a bag full of peripherals (including my old SupraFax 28.8K modem).

Electric Sunday runs from 10am-3pm, usually at at the I-66 Transfer Station on West Ox Road in Fairfax. I got a late start, leaving around 2pm and getting there about 2:20pm.

There was a pretty substantial line on West Ox, taking up the turn lanes from either direction. And once you got inside, there was a Disney-esque switchback, which I hadn't encountered before.

The crowd was probably heavier because this was the first Electric Sunday since Christmas, with a lot of newly replaced TVs and computers.

I got through after about 20 minutes waiting and reading the paper. As I was leaving, I took a picture of the line to get in, just about 3pm:

I may have to go again next month. (I think I have an old mercury thermostat that needs to go into hazardous waste recycling, plus a few other things.) In which case, I'll try harder to get there early.

Exclusive: An Insider's Look at the FDA's Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) Meeting

Starting Wednesday, January 18, 2012, the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is having three days of meetings to discuss issues and recent findings around dissolvable tobacco products (which include items like tobacco orbs [similar to a breath mint], strips [similar to a breath freshening strip] and sticks [similar to a... well, it's a toothpick])

Here's info from RJ Reynolds tobacco on its dissolvable tobacco products, via Wikipedia (which as you might recall, is going dark for a day on January 18):

Click the image to enlarge.

The meetings will be webcast, and you can find the full details about the meeting, background materials, and webcast information at the TPSAC meeting announcement page.

An Insider's Look at the Meeting

Through a combination of tradecraft, persuasion and other techniques, and at great personal and professional risk, I've been able to obtain an exclusive video showing footage from the FDA's preparatory sessions:

It should be an interesting meeting.